


When the Wind Blows

by WispyWordedWallflower



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet, F/M, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Lost Love, M/M, Making Out, Misunderstandings, One Shot, POV First Person, POV Jean Kirstein, Past Relationship(s), Regret, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, apparently I can't write normal happy fluff, because i love me some tragic love, lntrospection, which this was supposed to be at first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:44:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10811118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WispyWordedWallflower/pseuds/WispyWordedWallflower
Summary: The space didn’t matter even a bit- still doesn’t- after all, I’m still thinking about that boy even now.The space between a touch is irrelevant.





	When the Wind Blows

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy there!
> 
> Whilst I should've maybe been writing chapters for an already unfinished fanfic, I decided to write a fic for a completely different fandom just because.  
> I guess the new season of AoT re-ignited my love of JeanMarco...I had to write something!!
> 
> It's just a one shot for now, but I might make it a multi-chapter fic depending on how I feel.  
> Enjoy!! ^^

When December comes around and the realization that “holy shit, it's Christmas” hits like a ton of bricks, I get stressed.

Like _really damn_ stressed.

I don't know why I get so worked up, it's not like we have any kids or anything, and we're definitely not short on cash. Maybe it's because I constantly feel the need to prove myself.  
To my wife, I mean.  
You see, when we first started dating, it was because she had reminded me of another person. Well, that’s not exactly right. Nah, scratch that, I take it back. She wasn’t anything like that person really; they were complete opposites aside from their unparalleled talent for playing the Piano.  
Anyway, so I met my wife during my twenty-fourth spring.  
Our first fateful (?) encounter was in a down and out little bar, dead to 99.999% of the city populace and packed neatly in the back alleys of a scummy little area called West Street; ‘Scope Shot’ I think the place was- _‘SS’_ for familiarity’s sake; that’s what we always called it anyway so the actual name of the place was irrelevant. 

Well, _SS_ might’ve smelled like worn, lit leather and wood damp with the scent of spilt liquor. The black stairs, the black stools and the even blacker walls might’ve hit like lead the minute you stumbled in (and believe me, you _would_ be stumbling- no sober person would enter a dive like that in the hopes of getting lucky), but _the music._ Oh god, the music.  
_The Piano._  
_Fucking glorious._  
The staff at SS loved the Piano, the Violin and Strings in general. Boy, did they love them a bit of Jazz too.  
An acquired taste of course, but it hit the ears like a gunshot- sharp, sudden and thunderous;  
fingers flitting across the keys like fine rain.  
It was _similar,_ that was my first thought, and my alcohol hazed mind convinced me it had to be him playing.  
But after the initial rush that carried me down those cartridge black stairs- after nearby swinging the door off its hinges and looking over the bobbing heads of the few patrons; after the fact, I saw this pretty, little oriental thing commanding the piano 

For one, they looked different. I mean, beyond the obvious ‘she’s a girl and he’s a dude’ thing, they moved differently too.  
And looking at someone whilst they’re playing completely revolutionizes the experience. It sounds different when sight and sound bleed together.  
Where his eyes were flamed, and filmed with an emotion which refused to be tamed, hers were glazed over in deep contemplation over something unreadable to me.  
Her touches were feathery and didn’t miss a beat in their weightlessness.  
But his- well, they were always slower- _heftier,_ even- no matter what piece he played, and I’m sure he tended to match his playing to his own breathing.  
She sat straight and peered _anywhere_ , let her hands to the talking. He bored holes into the keys, couldn’t help humming along.  
Hmm, I don’t know. I don’t mean to stereotype, but maybe it _is_ a gender thing after all is said and done. 

I remember thinking these same things back then. Just staring at this girl whose presence I had expected least, and for the first time I understood. I had to let go of Marco.  
Because you don’t have the right to keep hold of feelings you don’t have the guts to grasp.  
It was time to grasp something- someone- I was unafraid of.  
That was it, I was gonna go for it.  
Do what normal guys do and bite the bullet.  
See a cute girl and ask her out; pull out all the stops to impress her and stop over-analyzing everything.

That’s what I was planning anyway, until she side-eyes me mid-song and gives me a head tilt- a quirk of the eyebrow so slight, you wouldn’t notice it unless you were gawking at her like a Hawk (which I was)- presumably gesturing a _‘What is it?’_. Admirably, she didn’t miss a beat of the tune she was playing. What a woman.

My attempt at a casual shrug-off probably looked somewhat like a fish flailing for dear life in a net.  
Needless to say, she looked unimpressed.  
I did manage to catch her after she finished playing though, and the few gentleman in the bar finally cleared out.  
And what did I say, you ask? What was the first thing I said to the hot chick I was currently enamored with?

_“Um, soooo—I was- wellll…hahaha- y-y-you have pretty hair.”_  
I stuttered. I fucking _stuttered._  
Okay.  
So that was smooth.  
But hey, my gross, drunken flirting techniques must've worked because we were dating around a month later.  
We were living together just under a year later.  
And we were _married_ three years later.  
She was the one who proposed to me of course. I couldn't take those steps on my own, so she silently took them for me. She took them by getting down on one knee in the middle of the street and asking me if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.  
And I said yes.  
I said, _“Damn right, I’ll marry you!”_  
Giving that answer- marrying her- well, it was the best decision I ever made.  
She soothes me in the way you can only be soothed by watching waters ripple over river banks during fall. She soothes me because she's certain and she never changes, just as the certainty and predictability of the seasons never changes.  
Is that love?  
Can you still fall into something if you don't believe in it?  
I think now at least that the answer to that question is undoubtedly ‘yes’; in much the same way people can walk around with all kinds of sicknesses without knowing, and then one day the bomb drops, the elephant in the room booms, and you're told monotonously,

_“You're sick”._

Everything I am, the man I've become, the roots we've made- well it's all because of her.  
How can I ever begin to repay her for that?  
We've never discussed this of course, since she'd most definitely punch me in the face and tell me I was being a pathetic, sniveling idiot. That's just the kind of woman she is. An unbelievably strong and brave and wonderful woman. A woman who keeps me grounded, content and secure, and I want to spend the rest of my life trying to give just as much to her as she does to me. But on nights like these, when the window to the left of me is slightly ajar, and the crisp winter air seeps through, I'm not so sure that I can. 

When the wind blows during winter, it howls. It howls and it reminds me of the past.  
And guilt grips me like a noose around the neck.  
On nights like these, I find myself unable to sleep, because along with the pure, crisp breeze; along with that damp, aching air comes the sparkling scent of nostalgia that dulls reality. That scent that I hate, but love nonetheless.  
After staring in deep contemplation at my hand which is outstretched toward the ceiling, I start wondering how much of a dick I probably look. So, I decide to bring the arm back down to my side and lean up on my knees to look at the silent city scape locked outside. Peering through the open crack of the window, I let my heartbeat slow and the ice pierce through my airways as I breathe like it's my first and last time. Looking up from under the dead-end city, my eyes widen and an impressed whistle forms from parted lips.  
_Well, would’ ya look at that. The stars are positively fucking glowing tonight._

And suddenly, I'm eighteen again.

<>

It's late- really late- and I'm stood by the small open window in the room of our shared flat. I remember it being December, a few days before Christmas. The whole area was caped in a cascading darkness, but the stars penetrated through the sky, the window, the room, and everything else; it was a night much like tonight, only the stars were even brighter then. Although at the time I didn't really have time to take note of that because I was too busy being backed up against the wall opposite the window. I was too busy gaping in shock at the scene playing out in my room, the scene I was somehow starring in. Sure, it was sudden and shocking and unexpected, in all the right (and wrong) ways of course. I was suddenly being touched- being loved- by another person; in the curious, clumsy way that's only possible when you're young. There were so many kisses I was getting drunk on them-  
Passionate ones. Needy ones. The types of kisses you use your whole body to execute.  
Somehow soft and rough and gentle all at the same time.  
The inexperienced fumbling and pining of two lustful idiots who couldn’t seduce their way out of a paper bag with the aid of a pair of scissors.  
But hey, we were two eighteen-year-old guys who hadn’t even gone past second-base with a _girl_ so of course we were clueless. Well, I was anyway.

The experience was euphoric but not so earth-shattering that it wasn’t tinged with awkwardness, which ironically made it even more euphoric. Dear god, I don't know how I possibly elicited so much strength as to keep my hands by my sides the entire time, when all I wanted to do was touch him everywhere. In every way possible. I was turned on. I was turned on a whole damn lot.  
Or if we're being frank, my dick was straining against my trouser leg and it was hot, throbbing and uncomfortable as fuck. I felt like I was gonna piss myself.  
Not exactly a picture of romance, right?  
In fact, it was pretty pathetic. Who gets so worked up over kisses (even if his lips were goddamn pretty and soft)?  
I was experiencing what I’ve come to identify as the Trinity of Contradiction- wanting to get fucked into oblivion, needing to fuck _him_ into oblivion, and not wanting to do anything at all accept for maybe give him the ‘no homo, bro’ slip. The easy pickings route.  
Well, the ‘easy-pickings’ route became the nearby impossible route real fast, because the beautiful bastard leans down on me real close and exhales a stuttering breath that hit that part right between my ear and neck just right,

“ _Jean_ , l-let me- I-I want—”

Then he grabs my hips real tight and rocks up against me, quick and hard. No tact there. No control, but I’d be a shit liar if I said I hadn’t wanted more of his cock twitching against my thigh like that. I wanted his trousers off too, if I’m being completely honest. 

_Holy shit._  
It sounds stupid as hell, I know, but I think it was then when I realized what I was doing and who I was doing it with.  
A virgin.  
My roommate.  
My friend.  
Marco.  
_A guy._

Wasn’t it weird to be turned on? _Gross,_ even?

He does that hip thing again, but the second time it’s slower and more calculated and the angle is perfect because our dicks are throbbing against each other in a way that’s just electric.  
_Does he feel that, too- that…ah, shit!_  
_Damn it all to hell!_  
I look for clarification to find that he was fucking feeling it, alright. Maybe even more than I was.  
If my body was on-fire, then Marco had been burned to ash and had long since departed the human realm. He made quite the picture, with his eyes all scrunched up like that, his mouth hanging open and his face so red, it looked like it’d been scalded by the surface of the sun or some other poetic crap involving heat or blushing or the color red. His stupid, perfect face was making my little problem downstairs worse. 

“F-fuckin’ _hell_ , Mar--”

It’s a simple thing really. Just two bodies, a movement, some heat and a little friction…but Marco? He made it look and feel like fucking _magic._  
I could go on forever in gushing about the fascination of firsts and never were-s.  
No point now.  
Dangerous territory.  
Just like my body was back then.

I remember pinning my back to the door to create some illusion of space, but Marco didn’t get it and his stupid, hard body just clinked against mine like a puppet with strings attached. The door knocks and creaks against our combined weight. He sidles his wandering hands down my hips and stops to slide them up under my thighs, then he shifts into me further so I’m straddling his hips. The fact that I’m elevated slightly above him is something Marco takes advantage of; he’s mouthing at my jaw and I can tell he’s losing his famous composure when teeth graze against the nook of my neck.  
_‘Fuck, that feels good.’_  
Too bad I was too much of a coward to say it out loud.

I arch against his lips, but the movement is so slight that he can’t have noticed.  
The noise I make- the whine that tumbles from my tongue- definitely is though, and it’s something that spurs Marco on, if only for a moment. He sinks his face lower into my neck and plants kiss-slick lips against my collarbone, nice and slow. Then he drags his teeth down and nips. The pain bites, but is soon replaced with the heat of Marco’s mouth sucking and teasing bruises out.  
I can smell his hair in this position- the scent of vanilla and burnt-out matches. All fireworks and breathless nights.  
_Ah, I wanna kiss into it and run my fingers through it all night. Ugh._  
His nimble fingers claw into my sides a bit.  
_I wonder if he knows he’s even doing that; his eyes are still closed._  
I close mine for a moment too.  
_I wonder why in the hell I’m not uttering any words of protest yet._

_Right, right. I should stop this._  
Instead, I just bunched up my shaking hands in his shirt.

When he breathes against kiss-drunk skin, something crawls up my spine like a shot and the next thing I know, I’m chewing needily at my lip pretending it’s his.  
Poor, innocent Marco just opens his eyes and gawps at me like he doesn’t know he’s pushing my buttons in all the right places, with that concerned look he wore like Gucci,

“Oh god, I-I’m so sorry, Jean. I didn’t even ask, I mean—” he starts.  
Never have I wanted to touch someone so badly as I wanted to touch him then.  
Instead, I opted to physically squirm against that urge, but being weak at the knees meant I completely lose balance and flop to the floor like a bag of very heavy and very horny bricks.

Marco mirrors my movements and falls to his knees in front of me, breathing strained and heavy.  
Then he smiles like it’s the most natural thing in the world,

“Jeez, Jean…you’re gonna drive me crazy at this rate.”

Try struggling in quicksand and you’ll only sink faster. 

Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite as stimulating as watching a placid person lose their shit because of you. It’s satisfying in a way nothing else ever could be, doubly so when you’ve been close to said person for an extended period of time.  
So, when Marco sighs, hooks his fingers in my belt loops and pants a sultry, _“what do you want me to do to you, Jean?”_ in my ear whilst dragging my lower half towards his…well. I pretty much come to the conclusion that I’m a goner. My face burns bright and deep, and thank god it’s dark so he can’t see the color flurry in my cheeks. Because let’s face it, if his sweet little kisses and a bit of heavy petting made me slick to the tip, then actual skin on skin contact in a well-lit room was just gonna make me _embarrass_ myself. 

I think I get it now though. 

The space didn’t matter even a bit- still doesn’t- after all, I’m still thinking about that boy even now. The space between a touch is irrelevant. 

“Please say something. Or I’ll start thinking I’m the only one who wants this so--.”  
I gulp audibly.  
_I felt like someone was holding me at gunpoint._  
Then my head dips and I look away.

Some horrible little devil in my head was celebrating with party poppers and champagne, knowing its hoarder could hide behind the skirt of misunderstandings.

His face drops, “shit. That’s not it, is it? Shit, shit, _shit_. T-this isn’t—”

Marco points his fingers to gesture between the two of us and I can feel the fear radiating from his body as the words tumble out, “it’s just me. You don’t- don’t want…any of… _this._ Haha, of course you damn well don’t. T-there’s no way you could. God, I am so fucking sorry, Jean.”

I never heard him curse before then, to be honest. 

Time had slowed- painfully- down and our breaths were visible and mingling with the frost oozing in through the window. Before that point though, I couldn't feel an ounce of the cold. I mean, everything was so hot. I was burning up. Burning with excitement, exhilaration and now fear.

It’s silent for some drawn out moments until Marco breaks that along with my certainty.

“I’m sorry”, he says and the slight crack in his voice is painful to me.  
_Why?_  
He suddenly moves to set uncertain lips tenderly on my eyelids where they linger for a moment, and he sighed into my skin like I was pure contentment.  
“I’m sorry,” he repeats- like a mantra, monotonous and low. 

_What should I do? What do I say? How should I handle this?_

**_‘Don’t.’_ **

He stopped. He stopped and he pulled far, far back, and he looked at me like nobody has ever looked at me.  
And I knew.  
_I knew that I definitely had to get the fuck out of that room._  
Gestures like that are hard to handle. They’re downright _dangerous_ is what they are.

So, there we, slumped by the door of my cramped, messy room lit entirely by stars, and time stopped. Everything just stopped.  
It was kinda like being lured into a state of hypnosis, or being put under some sort of spell. His eyes were boring through my skull with so much intensity; like he was trying to commit me entirely to memory by burning my face into his mind. To this very day, I've never seen any person look at someone the way he gazed at me that night. It was beautiful and honest and _absolutely terrible._  
My heart hitched in my chest.  
Looking back on it now, I think he must've been silently asking for something; some sort of reaction, an answer, a sign. A signal that it was okay, and that perhaps I felt the same.  
_I think I did._  
_I really, really think I did._  
I still--

_I was scared._

Marco must’ve been terrified too, maybe more than me…but he still waited in vain for something I would never give him, because I didn't initiate anything. I just held back, and I didn't say a goddamn word.  
I was just too scared.

This boy was doing things to my head. Ruining things, he was messing me up and I simultaneously loved and hated everything about that.  
But the hate- the discomfort- well, it won out, so of course I couldn't do anything.  
I knew that if I kissed him of my own accord, everything would change.  
I don’t like change; I simply wasn’t built for it. It was too much for someone like me. I could neither push him away nor pull him closer, so instead I just leaned limply against the door, hands uselessly hanging by my sides and the heat dissipating.  
And then I-  
_Sorry. Sorry. Sorry._  
_Marco, I’m so-_

“I feel sick”.

<>

I mutter to myself as I let my eyes flutter shut and I edge my face further outside the window to breathe in some of the only pure fragments of air in this polluted city. As I do, I ghost my fingers over my eyelids and hum quietly.

My wife yawns softly, shuffling and moving to prod me in the ribcage,  
“What was that?”

I wince and will myself back to the present,  
“Ouch! Ow, ow….it was nothing, now please stop poking me...one prod from you and it feels like I'm being punched in the gut by Mike Tyson.”

She just gives me this unamused look and deadpans, “What an awful thing to say to a delicate flower such as myself”. She clears her throat, then continues in a tone I've come to recognize as mockery over the years,  
“You worry me. Honestly, I wake up and there you are, staring at the sky and muttering to the stars. Do you need professional help, _dear?_ ”

Deciding to ignore her rare sass and choosing to instead remain silent, I retort by brushing my lips over her nose. Then I lay back down and pull the sheets over our heads. It's pitch black, but I know she's staring me straight in the eyes, so I pull her closer and I whisper,  
“I'm fine, please go to sleep and stop worrying about me, Mikasa”.

She scrunches her hands up into my t-shirt and doesn't speak for a while, and the only thing I can hear are her sweet, shallow breaths. Then, she whispers a barely audible “goodnight, Jean”.

I run that beautiful hair of hers through my fingers and smile to myself, “Yeah, g' night”.

_It's so simple._

I'm awake for a few hours after that, until I hear Mikasa's soft snores filling the room and I'm lulled into a peaceful sleep.

The window is left open.  
I let the winter breeze swoop in and it catches the side of my face in a way that douses my body in a cold flame.  
Winter is my favorite season.

We tied the knot in a July.

Yeah, marrying Mikasa is the best decision I have ever made- I’ll stand by that until I die- but leaving Marco like that had to have been the worst.  
_Marco, eh?_  
I wonder how he’s doing now.


End file.
